Whatever ship you buy for your character is his/hers to keep permanently. Even if you leave the fleet, the ship is still yours.

Fleet gear, especially those of the final fleet tier, is just a handy way for Cryptic to sell players their 'best of the best' gear as it is really expensive to upgrade a fleet holdings. (PS: not all fleet gear are the best, some are actually quite useless. So it may be wise to ask around before you purchase something)

Is there any way to interact with your non-combat pet? I got a raptor...it would be fun to pet it or praise it or something...they should add that as a mini game. if you get your pet to like you enough it gives you bonuses or surprises. (not poop.) lol.

So current executive producer Dan Stahl has moved on to another secret Cryptic project and the Emergency Executive Producer Hologram is taking his place. I call Stephen D'Angelo the EEPH because he's the person who took over as executive producer for 6 months while it was converted over to the free-to-play model.

Okay, so I'm a little behind, but I finally made an Embassy visit. Oh my, there are nice things to be acquired there. Picked up a Science console for my Assault build - Emitter Array Mk XII [+Th] [Pla].

So current executive producer Dan Stahl has moved on to another secret Cryptic project and the Emergency Executive Producer Hologram is taking his place. I call Stephen D'Angelo the EEPH because he's the person who took over as executive producer for 6 months while it was converted over to the free-to-play model.

I wonder what he will do to STO? More stories? More action?

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Honestly? This is only an opinion, but D'Angelo didn't strike me as a visionary. More like a strawman producer who got to do all the nasty F2p transition no one wanted back in the day and the introduction of Dilithium.
That's his legacy so far.

If we can expect more of this, it will do nothing to get me back in the game now that my interest is at an all time low anyway.

Well the new EP has just announced some of the upcoming changes to the game. I must say most of the changes make it sound like Cryptic is placing STO in maintenance mode. At least for the short term, nothing is being done to draw in new players.

Greetings Captains,

The latest update to Star Trek Online, Season 8.5, is just around the corner, and we have some pleasant surprises for you.

The update will be releasing on January 30, 2014, as part of Star Trek Online’s 4th anniversary celebration. Participating in the usual fun and games with Q will let you earn a cool new starship (or three!). Federation, Romulan Republic, and Klingon Defense Force scientists have been hard at work adapting Dyson technology to their standard ship designs, and you can be among the first to try out these new hybrid starships.

We also will be releasing a new featured episode alongside the update – it stars a Star Trek actor who will bring their character to STO for the first time. We’re excited to be continuing the storyline for the game with this amazing episode, and we’ll be announcing who this actor is in about a week, when you will get your first sneak peek at the episode.

We’re not stopping there, though.

The STO team is always working to improve the game. In Season 8, we updated the Federation tutorial to improve the initial experience. In this update, we have made a pass at 12 episodes in the early Federation experience, updating the episodes to hit a higher quality bar with both art and gameplay improvements throughout.

Another area we looked at was the hourly event calendar. Our data showed that few of these events were being played often, and so we are re-envisioning the hourly events as weekend-long events with better rewards. You can expect the hourly calendar to disappear with Season 8.5, with the new events showing up on the main calendar. Additionally, a small selection of the existing hourly events are being turned into Daily missions – we’ll provide more information on this soon.

And there's something exciting for players that have many starships in spacedock! With the Season 8.5 update, you will be able to easily switch between your starships in sector space and social zones – we want to make it easy to quickly get to the ship you want to fly. Not only that, but each of your starships can have multiple pre-made build-outs saved, and you will be able to switch between them quickly and easily. Now you will be able to prepare separate PvE and PvP builds, or have a special anti-Voth spec for your ships waiting to quickly be swapped in. Equipping ships also gets easier with the new “easy equip” feature coming in the update. In addition, we’re going to be increasing the current ship slot limit. You’re going to love it!

We have many more details on this update coming your way in a series of dev blogs during the next two weeks as we approach the release date. All of the features above and more will be covered in depth by the team.

We look forward to seeing you on update day to enjoy all the new changes and to celebrate the 4th anniversary of Star Trek Online!

The latest update to Star Trek Online, Season 8.5, is just around the corner, and we have some pleasant surprises for you.

~

And there's something exciting for players that have many starships in spacedock! With the Season 8.5 update, you will be able to easily switch between your starships in sector space and social zones – we want to make it easy to quickly get to the ship you want to fly. Not only that, but each of your starships can have multiple pre-made build-outs saved, and you will be able to switch between them quickly and easily. Now you will be able to prepare separate PvE and PvP builds, or have a special anti-Voth spec for your ships waiting to quickly be swapped in. Equipping ships also gets easier with the new “easy equip” feature coming in the update. In addition, we’re going to be increasing the current ship slot limit. You’re going to love it!

~

Stephen D’Angelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online

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That's what I've been waiting for! Do you know what a pain it is to currently switch between ships.

even when changing ships is easy, it's the BOFF configuration, and gear loadout that makes it harder. Nice if they can save some of it, but gear is going to be harder to do like that. And I don't carry most of it, it stays parked on other ships, so can only get to it when you get the ship selector options from a base or whatever...

BOFF layout yes, gear could be a tougher one to save correctly. Maybe I'll be surprised, but just seems like an easy one to screw up, as I swap my high end gear to whatever ship i'm flying, so things need to be more fluid...

I definitely got the sense that they're making gear loadouts savable as well. Which is cool, because I generally don't change my ship gear to suit the enemy I'm flying against, because I don't think too much about the fact that some of the stuff I have works better against some enemies than against others.

I seem to remember another comment suggesting it wouldn't matter if the gear was in your bank or inventory, either.

Curious...Received email about expired exchange sale, but item in question was not returned to my inventory, character bank, or account bank. I haven't messed with the exchange very much...what little I have put up always sold. I received email on the 16th. but didn't open until today (20th). was there a window I missed? it was a rare item so I'd like it back if it didn't sell. should I file a ticket?